A Small Victory for Lifestyle Design

Though I’ve never read The 4 hour work week, I’m a big proponent of some of the ideas it presents. One of these ideas is the concept of lifestyle design. I firmly believe that if you want it badly enough can work hard enough, you can accomplish whatever life you desire. The question of course is whether the sacrifices required are worth the reward. Are 70 hour work weeks worth the Lexus sitting in your driveway? Is the approval of your well-off peers important enough that you work in a job you hate for the income to maintain a lavish lifestyle? Are you willing to give up these things and bust your ass to achieve the life you want, essentially sacrificing short term luxuries for long term freedom?

Of course there doesn’t always have to be sacrifice. I recently pitched an idea to my team that a 4-day week would be swingable. Essentially it’s the same amount of hours compressed into 4 days instead of 5. Better still, the day off would be a Friday. So, that means a 3-day weekend almost every week.

I say almost, because the proposal was accepted, but not exactly fully. We’re going to start off with just 1 shift that works these hours and see how it goes. If we manage to ratchet that up to 2, I’ll have a 4 day week every other week.